People say this like it's a simple engineering problem.
No. By itself, a new hypersonic engine can't make 2-hour flights between Japan and the US a reality. We are not even close to being able to build an aircraft that can do that - we don't even have the materials for that. What seems "easier" (as in "less impossible") is a hypersonic glider design that enters a suborbital trajectory and does shuttle-like aerobraking while it glides to its destination, before reengaging propulsion prior to landing on an airstrip (because passenger planes need to be able to abort landings and do multiple attempts). Not sure how reverse thrust would work there - variable geometry rocket bells?
>At that elevation at Mach‑5, air around the nose and leading edges can reach temperatures exceeding 1,000 degrees Celsius (1,832°F), a challenge...
It is not the conical nose or leading edges that are the show stopper problem(s). There the shockwave generally does not touch the craft. The internal shockwaves that touch the walls of the engine ducting are. The heat loading and heat soak ability on those shockwave impingement sites will limit the duration of hypersonic travel.
Hypersonic travel through the atmosphere is easy, a problem solved in the 1950s. Be conical and carry your oxygen internally. Hypersonic travel that is air-breathing is an entirely different class of problem and I don't think it is anywhere near to being solved.
The only silver lining is that at hypersonic speeds you don't need to be propulsive for very long to get anywhere.
Cool science. But the article fails to take even a cursory stab at contextualising the plan against the economic, environmental and political backdrop - doesn’t even mention that there’s already been one failed supersonic commercial flight programme. This is as pie-in-the-sky as it gets.
> At that elevation at Mach‑5, air around the nose and leading edges can reach temperatures exceeding 1,000 degrees Celsius (1,832°F), a challenge the U.S. Air Force has struggled to overcome with its own hypersonic jets.
> To handle that level of heat, engineers constructed an advanced thermal‑protection system that maintained the aircraft's interior near normal operating temperature, allowing the onboard avionics and control electronics to function normally.
I've always wanted someone to bring back the Avro Arrow to use the Iroquois engine for freight, but I don't think anyone has the knowledge to even pull it off anymore.
Interesting, but assuming they can get the engine to work as intended, the question still remains how the passenger jet would get up to Mach 5 so the engine can start working. A solid-fuel rocket booster that would then drop off?
First time I heard the word "ramjet" was as a kid watching the Goliath episode of Knight Rider. Definitely not a documentary, but the word stuck.
Then the Blackbird showed up in some plane book, and that was that.
Ramjets back in the news. Kid me is having a great morning.
Is a Mach-5 passenger aircraft actually the goal of this project?
Seems more likely that Japan is designing this engine for a hypersonic cruise missile program, and the passenger aircraft concept is somewhat of a cover.
IMO, there is no point in a Mach-5 Aircraft (other than cruise missiles). There is potentially some point in Mach 2-3 aircraft, (not that we have ever made them commercially viable) but at the boundary to hypersonic, you might as well just switch to a suborbital hop concept.
A suborbital hop gets you to anywhere in the world within ~90min, avoids issues of supersonic overflight and you don't need to worry about the massive engineering issues caused by sustaining hypersonic flight. And as a bonus, the passengers get a hour of weightlessness.
> Is a Mach-5 passenger aircraft actually the goal of this project?
> Seems more likely that Japan is designing this engine for a hypersonic cruise missile program, and the passenger aircraft concept is somewhat of a cover.
Case of China's got them, and can't rely on the Orange Emperor and his heirs to have their backs.
I always thought it was an underutilized design that could be improved for practical applications.
Improved enough, it could become cheaper and more environmentally-friendly than current aviation whereas regular supersonic jets are never going to achieve that.
For many many reasons this engine only has one economic application - delivery of a nuclear payload in a way which is very hard for missile defences to stop.
ICBMs can go faster than this already but as I understand it they go higher allowing for earlier detection and they follow a more predictable trajectory which makes interception more realistic.
I find super fast missiles far scarier than advanced AI. I suppose they maintain the "mutually assured destruction" which might be the main reason there hasn't been a nuclear war since WW2, but it's not a huge comfort.
Ramjets were developed right after the second world war and Mach 4+ was reached in the fifites. It's complicated but not extremely. See Antonio Ferri or Lockheed X-7.
It turned out out solid fuel rockets are operationally more practical for the use cases like air defence, long range missiles that are ballistic instead of cruising in the atmosphere and so on. And jet engines are more efficient for subsonic cruise missiles. Ramjets are still used in some missiles like the long range mach 3 air-to-air Meteor.
...it never went into an actually flying airplane though (apparently there were test flights with Lorin tubes attached to propeller planes, but only to test the Lorin tube behaviour under flight conditions, not as an engine replacement).
The idea and patent itself is over a century old by now:
I actually learned about what a ramjet is after looking up the definition of “scramjet” when watching the _Top Gun: Maverick_ movie with my son. This is at the beginning of the movie when he is flying the Dark Star plane designed in conjunction with Skunk Works from Lockheed Martin. Well, we are obviously a ways away from Mach 10 reached in the film by the SR-71 Blackbird descendant, the new technology pushing Mach 5 and into high hypersonic is pretty impressive.
> A scramjet is a variant of a ramjet airbreathing jet engine in which combustion takes place in supersonic airflow. As in ramjets, a scramjet relies on high vehicle speed to compress the incoming air forcefully before combustion, but whereas a ramjet decelerates the air to subsonic velocities before combustion using shock cones, a scramjet has no shock cone and slows the airflow using shockwaves produced by its ignition source in place of a shock cone - Wikipedia
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[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 55.4 ms ] threadNo. By itself, a new hypersonic engine can't make 2-hour flights between Japan and the US a reality. We are not even close to being able to build an aircraft that can do that - we don't even have the materials for that. What seems "easier" (as in "less impossible") is a hypersonic glider design that enters a suborbital trajectory and does shuttle-like aerobraking while it glides to its destination, before reengaging propulsion prior to landing on an airstrip (because passenger planes need to be able to abort landings and do multiple attempts). Not sure how reverse thrust would work there - variable geometry rocket bells?
It is not the conical nose or leading edges that are the show stopper problem(s). There the shockwave generally does not touch the craft. The internal shockwaves that touch the walls of the engine ducting are. The heat loading and heat soak ability on those shockwave impingement sites will limit the duration of hypersonic travel.
Hypersonic travel through the atmosphere is easy, a problem solved in the 1950s. Be conical and carry your oxygen internally. Hypersonic travel that is air-breathing is an entirely different class of problem and I don't think it is anywhere near to being solved.
The only silver lining is that at hypersonic speeds you don't need to be propulsive for very long to get anywhere.
> To handle that level of heat, engineers constructed an advanced thermal‑protection system that maintained the aircraft's interior near normal operating temperature, allowing the onboard avionics and control electronics to function normally.
Hindenburg 2.0 waiting to happen
Seems more likely that Japan is designing this engine for a hypersonic cruise missile program, and the passenger aircraft concept is somewhat of a cover.
IMO, there is no point in a Mach-5 Aircraft (other than cruise missiles). There is potentially some point in Mach 2-3 aircraft, (not that we have ever made them commercially viable) but at the boundary to hypersonic, you might as well just switch to a suborbital hop concept.
A suborbital hop gets you to anywhere in the world within ~90min, avoids issues of supersonic overflight and you don't need to worry about the massive engineering issues caused by sustaining hypersonic flight. And as a bonus, the passengers get a hour of weightlessness.
Case of China's got them, and can't rely on the Orange Emperor and his heirs to have their backs.
From an environmental point of view, I hope this won't materialise for some time.
I always thought it was an underutilized design that could be improved for practical applications.
Improved enough, it could become cheaper and more environmentally-friendly than current aviation whereas regular supersonic jets are never going to achieve that.
ICBMs can go faster than this already but as I understand it they go higher allowing for earlier detection and they follow a more predictable trajectory which makes interception more realistic.
I find super fast missiles far scarier than advanced AI. I suppose they maintain the "mutually assured destruction" which might be the main reason there hasn't been a nuclear war since WW2, but it's not a huge comfort.
But what about super fast missiles with advanced AI?
It turned out out solid fuel rockets are operationally more practical for the use cases like air defence, long range missiles that are ballistic instead of cruising in the atmosphere and so on. And jet engines are more efficient for subsonic cruise missiles. Ramjets are still used in some missiles like the long range mach 3 air-to-air Meteor.
Development already started during WW2 as one of many German last-ditch experiments, for instance:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kronach_Lorin
...it never went into an actually flying airplane though (apparently there were test flights with Lorin tubes attached to propeller planes, but only to test the Lorin tube behaviour under flight conditions, not as an engine replacement).
The idea and patent itself is over a century old by now:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ren%C3%A9_Lorin
> A scramjet is a variant of a ramjet airbreathing jet engine in which combustion takes place in supersonic airflow. As in ramjets, a scramjet relies on high vehicle speed to compress the incoming air forcefully before combustion, but whereas a ramjet decelerates the air to subsonic velocities before combustion using shock cones, a scramjet has no shock cone and slows the airflow using shockwaves produced by its ignition source in place of a shock cone - Wikipedia